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Let's start by wishing you a prosperous, joyous and all-around successful happy new year! We wish we could join other sites in presenting you with an insightful retrospective; alas, we cannot - we only started a couple of months ago, and we have yet to finalize the "look and feel" of our website.
What we can do, however, is throw you a floating device to help you breath through the "must read" reviews, retrospectives and predictions for the coming year - after all, Wired thinks that information overload will be THE problem for 2008 (1). But where Wired sees a problem, Seth, who just published a new book, sees only opportunities (2).
Established, fast growing sites can and will dazzle you with "best of " lists drawn from their own content. Lifehack, for instance, will bombard you with 70 tips and tricks, all worth reading (3) and if that's too much, Lifehacker has more (4). Confused?!? Well, you'll need to clear your head and gain a new perspective on life. Zen Habits comes to the rescue, with their own "best of" homebrew compilation (5).
If Seth wet your appetite for business news, you might want to jump straight to what the Economist has to say. Until then, our 6th "best of" is a compilation of the best Internet Marketing articles (6); you will find this most useful if you blog for money or if, unlike most internauts for whom the Internet is Pornland, you think of the Web as a still untapped resource. Entertainment is most likely the main driver of Internet searches and tigsource answers that call with a compilation of the best freeware games of 2007 (7).
Two thousand and seven wasn't exactly 1984, but like every year since 2001 it's been marred all over the world by progressive losses of civil rights and particularly of privacy. If that is your concern, you will find 8,9 and 10 particularly troubling. Google is the king of the new world, but the convenience it's showering on its subjects comes with warnings. The more you rely on Google, the more you stand to lose in privacy. Considering that all your email can be so easily stolen, it should come as no surprise to anyone that there are people still using Yahoo for email (11).
Considering how much good press Google has been getting at the expense of Yahoo, you might find that odd. When it comes to oddities, 2007 had its share. Let Reuters quickly walk you through the oddest of them (12). If you'd rather look at photos, find them at Oddrama (13).
One news item the Internet publishers should excel at is technology news, stars and dogs of 2007. In terms of products, Amazon has its unbeatable list of the best (14), but don't be fooled, Amazon has long ago ceased selling only books. If books is what you want to find, look no further than NYT's list (15). Going back to technologies that people actually don't have to make new year's resolutions to use, whether it's websites, products of software programs, you will find them in the next reviews (16-20). As you might expect, Vista is a disappointment, IE7 struggles as well, the iPhone is a resounding success, OLPC is a landmark not so much in adoption but in bringing prices down, the eeepc is its logical companion, Facebook and Digg are the social marvels of the Internet (at the expense of myspace and reddit, respectively) and the solid-state hard-disks would've taken over the world were it not for their high price and, more importantly, their limited size (18).
Youtube is as dumb as most of us, but there is light at the end of the tunnel (21) - also, have a look at the videos grouped in the right-hand column, they are rather dense :)
IBM takes a stab of reading their crystal ball (22), predicting an intelligent grid where we get to plug in intelligent machines named Lenovo and purchase Chinese intellectual products through through IBM's intelligent brokerage. From IBM to open source there is a minimal leap to make (23, 24). Open source software (affectionately known as FOSS, because it is most of all FREE) is what people who are smart and cheap use. There is this thing called Linux that was supposed to take over the world, but it has yet to do so in real, significant numbers.
You might think that the FOSS controversies and politics do not matter since they do not translate even in the rapidly depreciating USD. In that case, the Economist, our fav publication, has a forward looking analysis of the markets in 2008 (25) and also a look a 3 technology predictions for 2008 (27). Don't miss the article on charts, you'll enjoy it even (or especially) if you've never tried technical analysis!
IT Canada World looks at the tech startups to watch for 2008 (29); if you think that it's their technology that makes them special, you're right - here's a retrospective look at the breakthroughs of 2007 (30). Some are simply amazing and it's hard to believe they happened all in the same year: we can make stem cells from the skin, we can make Type O blood using enzymes / bacteria and we find out that female chimpanzees can make spears for hunting.
With so many achievements behind, 2008, the year of the Rat, is hard to beat the good old 2007, but it surely will :)
Once again, a Happy New Year!
UPDATE (Jan 1): Hangover alert! We forgot to include Michael Geist's excellent A to Z review of the year in law & technology, 2007 Darwin Award Winners or even the 2007 memorable quote list with video!!